Good party, bad party

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It's almost as if there are two Australian Labor Parties. The
bad Labor Party, if you believe the stereotype, is run by venal and
often faceless factional warlords who "stack" the local branches
and are interested only in advancement for themselves and their
malleable mates and the humiliation or even elimination of their
factional enemies.

This Labor Party was on display in the Victorian Supreme Court
yesterday, where state president and left-winger Brian Daley sued
state secretary and right-winger Stephen Newnham and the
Right-dominated national executive over internal rule changes that
would alter the delicate factional balance. This party is very
unattractive to "ordinary" left-of-centre folk who may be
interested in getting involved in the formal political process.

The good Labor Party, if you believe the alternative stereotype,
is Australia's oldest and proudest political party, with
"bottom-up" internal processes that make it an invigorating forum
for progressive thinkers who want to change society for the better,
particularly for the poor and underprivileged.

This Labor Party was on display in the Charles Pearson Theatre
at Melbourne University last weekend, where about 150 members gave
up a big slice of their Saturday afternoon to hear some of the
party's best and brightest lead a lively discussion on "ideas and
issues concerning the future of the ALP".

Among the speakers were elder statesmen Barry Jones (officially
the ALP's national president but unofficially the party's national
treasure) and Race Mathews (former federal MP, Cain government
minister, adviser to Labor hero Gough Whitlam and long-time
secretary of the Australian Fabian Society), and younger guns Mark
Dreyfus (Melbourne silk, author of the 1998 Dreyfus report on
reform of the state ALP, and prospective federal Labor MP) and Bill
Shorten (head of the Australian Workers Union, media darling,
probable future federal MP and, according to his many boosters in
party, union and even business circles, a possible future prime
minister).

The bad party is very unattractive to 'ordinary' left-of-centre folk who may be interested in getting involved.

The mood was generally up-beat - few subscribers here to the
Mark Latham "we're all rooned" thesis. Rather, there were reminders
that for the first time in its 100-plus years, the ALP was in
office in every state and territory, and that even under Latham's
eccentric leadership, the party had attracted about 4.5 million
voters at last year's federal election.

But a tight strand of realism also ran through the discussion.
Mathews and Jones, in particular, were blunt about the party's
plight.

"Four successive federal election defeats have exposed major
shortcomings on the part of the ALP," said Mathews. "Their effect
has been to hollow out party membership and levels of member
involvement and impair the party's capacity for effective policy
development and advocacy. Also impaired has been the party's
capacity to secure the best possible candidates for party office,
together with its sense of its own identity, principles and rapport
with the ordinary Australians whose interests it serves." That's
all.

He proposed an eight-point "renewal program", which focused on
micro-reforms: creating a "division of branch support and member
development", introducing induction courses for new members,
providing training for party chairmen and women, re-establishing a
party journal, instituting an annual "audit of key performance
indicators for branch effectiveness", that sort of thing.

Jones was more colourful and focused on the macro. The ALP, he
declared, must tell a story, "a grand narrative" of where it wanted
Australia to go. It had fallen out of the habit of marching
confidently into the political marketplace and saying, "Here's our
vision and, whether you like it or not, we're going for it."

He said the party had not experienced "bottom up" policy
development since the early 1980s, and draw rueful smiles with an
evocative characterisation of federal Labor's many manifestations
since the election of the Howard Government way back in 1996. Jones
labelled Kim Beazley I, that is the 1996 to 2001 period, as "small
target". Then came the brief Simon Crean era, "internal
distraction". The even briefer Latham experiment was "energetic
improvisation". And now it's Beazley II, "son of small target".

Dreyfus urged members to look beyond the many negatives that
sometimes seemed to engulf the ALP, and to contribute to the debate
about how to make their party better.

Shorten, as is his wont, floated a Big Idea. Perhaps the way to
end branch stacking and open up the ALP to a much broader spread of
the population, he suggested, was to introduce a US-style primaries
system for preselections. Perhaps registered supporters of the
party, and not just paid-up members, should get to choose who runs
for parliament under the ALP banner. (And a range of influential
thinkers from across the spread of Labor factions reckon this is an
idea worth at least a second look, if only to help break down the
"secret society" feel of the party as it now operates.)

It was an interesting and constructive afternoon - a small
display of Labor at its best amid the many contemporary displays of
Labor at its worst.

Of course, there aren't really two Labor Parties - this complex
and often internally contradictory beast is a one-off (Shorten, for
example, as an often impressive ideas machine is a member of the
good Labor Party, and as a sometime ruthless leader of the Right
faction is a member of the bad Labor Party). It's just that until
the many people of goodwill within the ALP manage to ensure that
the good parts get more of an airing at the expense of the bad
parts, the party will continue to struggle to attract new voters -
let alone new members.